so i finally did my first ever POTA activation yesterday at a state park about 45 minutes from my house. been meaning to do it for like six months and just kept putting it off. anyway i packed up my KX2 and a 40m end fed halfwave, threw my camp chair in the car and headed out.

got there and realized i had forgotten the counterpoise wire at home. just... left it sitting on my workbench. spent like 20 minutes trying to figure out if i could make something work with what i had, ended up stripping some wire from my jump kit in the car which was probably not ideal but hey. SWR was ugly but the internal tuner in the KX2 dealt with it well enough.

made 12 contacts in about an hour on 40m SSB, mostly guys who spotted me on the POTA app. activation counts so technically a success but man i need a better pre-departure checklist or something. anyone else have a disaster first activation story

haha yeah my first activation i forgot my log sheet AND my pen. ended up logging in the notes app on my phone which was fine but felt wrong somehow. 12 contacts is solid for a first run though, especially with a janky counterpoise situation. the KX2 tuner is pretty forgiving from what ive heard. you'll get a system down after a few of these, i just keep a bag semi-permanently packed now so i dont have to think about it each time.

12 contacts counts same as 100 contacts lol. i did one last spring where i set up in a parking lot instead of the actual park boundary by accident and had to pack everything up and move. check the unit boundaries before you go, some of those parks the actual qualifying land is weirdly specific on the map.